The Owl Club

Early 1988:

This was the last of occasional meetings. They were never planned, either at the end of the previous one, or by an announcement. Almost forty years before, the first conclave of "Owls" met and drafted the perameters of whatever formality would be attached to the brotherhood. Wisely, like owls, we kept it simple.

The first purpose was to recognise each other. "Hoooooo!" Was that the password? It was the password and the beginning and the end of all business, dialogue, communication and all other accrument attached to membership. No one else was voted in after the initial group declared themselves to be members of "The Owl Club" Hoooooo!

George Haas was the genius behind the whole idea. It fell on him like a bolt of lightning: a split second flash in the universe. The cosmos! I was there. I think Dave Wagner was there and maybe others.

Fraternities had passwords. They had secret handshakes. They did secret things unknown to the rest of the world. They had logos: letters in Greek and no matter what the combination was they all translated to tappa kega brew or rapea damea da. Sounds Greek to me. Fraternities had initiations that were always silly and sometimes weird and rarely fatal. Despite the risks many clamored to join. The membership could afford to be fickle and would reject the unworthy. After all, they had to be select. Some frats had rites where they liked to pull the pants off of pledges. You didn't have to join a secret society to have that happen. There were a couple of loners in our neighborhood (and yours) that liked doing that to strangers. And when we grew up we found that people of influence were doing it all the time, especially after election time.

Hoooooo! Strangers, outsiders, might hear this and ask for an investigation. You have to be careful about secret passwords when the climate is wrong. You have to be careful about gestures or salutations. Our whole nation had to change its salute to the flag when Nazis were a menace. Careful how you wave to someone. Seig heil.

Communists were on the rise and under beds at the time when The Owl Club members were saluting each other with Hoooooos. We survived because we weren't serious. Think of it. Serious people create monsters.

If we were serious The Owl Club would have millions of members today. We would be recognisable, like the Lions, the Moose, the Redmen, The Masons, The Democratic Party, the Catholic Church, left-handed people, Elvis fan clubs. George knew that, and if you weren't there when all the rules were laid out, you missed the boat.

People want to join clubs. They want to belong to something. They need to identify I guess. There might be a future to be gained. We could have gone two ways. We could be serious. We'd have to have our meetings in trees. Hoooooo! A reply would be heard from another branch or another tree if attendance was high. Hoooooo! On the other hand, if we wanted to go the way of Tappa Kega Brew, the fun gang would have initiations. Bets are that pledges would have their pants pulled down. Hoooooo!

They're the reasons George Haas kept it simple. No dues. No ambitious wannabes fighting for office. No long-winded empty-headed speeches. No power-struggles. No cheating. What a club! It was just for friends and asked nothing more.